Damn Interesting

Random Event Generators Predict the Future

This article is marked as 'retired'. The information here may be out of date and/or incomplete.

For the past seven years, random number generators have been running all over the world, electronically flipping 200 coins each second, with the intention of measuring a global consciousness. The Global Consciousness Project (GCP), originating from Princeton, have named these random event generators Electrogaiagrams (EGGs) and are using them to test whether a human consciousness extends a field around the earth which can change the results of random events. They claim that when an important event occurs, such as the 9/11 terrorist attack or the Indian Ocean tsunami, the random event generators start to display patterns that should not exist in truly random sequences.

Not only does the GCP detect spikes of less-than-random activity around some important events, but according to the project it actually predicts them, too. In the aforementioned 9/11 attack there was a bizarre spike of non-random activity four hours before the attacks; as for the Indian Ocean tsunami, analysts say that the EGGs detected it 24 hours in advance. “We may be able to predict that a major world event is going to happen,” says Roger Nelson, the project leader. “But we won’t know exactly what will happen or where it’s going to happen.”

As it stands now it will be difficult for the GCP to predict events since they examine data from the EGGs after an event occurs. In each study, an important event is chosen, ranging from the funeral of Princess Di to an Oprah Winfrey special airing on television. They then analyze a certain timespan around the event to test if the EGGs created numbers that are conclusively too patterned to be random.

Naturally there are many criticisms towards the GCP. First, how is one to determine what a significant event is? Then, how does one know how close a non-random event had to have occurred for it to be a significant relation? Also, wouldn’t it be easy to see a pattern before or after an important event and then claim it was responding to a global consciousness? Even if all these questions were answered, the project gives no solid explanation of how human consciousness would extend a field or affect random number generators.

While this project could be a case of scientists looking too hard at raw data to find patterns, the GCP disagrees. “We’re perfectly willing to discover that we’ve made mistakes, but we haven’t been able to find any, and neither has anyone else,” says Nelson. “Our data shows clearly that the chances of getting these results by fluke are one million to one against.” Also, the data the GCP releases are controlled experiments with defined criteria.

Even so, it is easy for a project like this to construct a hypothesis that cannot be disproved – any patterned data confirms the hypothesis, whereas any that does not are simply some other effects of global consciousness. However, until someone comes up with solid evidence that the GCP is fruitless, the EGGs will continue to flip their virtual coins, trying to see into the future.

Wow. Looking at the data, there has been quite a few misses, but it seems like most of the “major” stuff is there.

This is actually really damn interesting.

lateralus98

Posted 11 December 2005 at 12:20 am

I find this to be very amusing. I don’t believe one bit that this consciouness thing is affecting random number generators. What they don’t tell you is that they get spikes when nothing particularly big happens. These generators are obeying to the laws of statistics, the fact that there are peaks during important events is just a coincidence. The interesting thing is…if one were to carefully analyze the data…is that there are also spikes during times when there are no important events. In addition, when a spike does appear, it is very easy to associate it with an important event; you have thousands of newspapers to choose from. Why have they concluded that it is human consciousness that is affecting their data? It could be a million other things, such as a spaghetti monster or a software glitch. We’re are talking about scientists here…gimme a break. As for the “predictions”, anyone with an education can make semi-accurate predictions…. and if they turn out wrong, just don’t publish them on the website!!

Anyway, if you look at the website at the bottom is a graph. They explain what kind of trend a sequence of random numbers should look like. Then they state that the observed numbers from the random generators are totally different. Of course they are!! this is to be expected since it is impossible to create a truly random number electronically, we can only hope to get a very close approximation. It is surprising that these “scientists” then conclude that it must be human consciousness….???? /end rant

JustAnotherName

Posted 11 December 2005 at 08:22 am

What ” lateralus98″ said.

Bryan Lowder

Posted 16 December 2005 at 06:45 pm

Hmmmmmmmmmm. What KIND of random number generators? All numerically-based “random” number generators (like your RND statement) are really only quasi-random, or require a keypress to generate a random number of miliseconds. The only valid random number generators would use a physical event, preferably radioactive decay.

Daniel Lew

Posted 17 December 2005 at 06:21 am

I wondered about their RNGs, too. I once had to spend a long time explaining to a physics friend that their randon number generators were not actually random, just random enough to do operations on.

It sounds to me that they think the RNGs they use are completely random, but it did not sound like they were using something truly random like radioactive decay.

Dan has answered a letter about this (the final letter). Has some interesting links, and somewhat predictably comes to the conclusion that it’s nonsense.

Rinson Drei

Posted 03 July 2006 at 01:38 pm

This kind of voodoo science is an excellent reason to be cautious of any scientific claims that rest mainly on statistical evidence, especially apocalyptic ones. Random noise, passed through Procrustean Mathematical filters, can be processed to generate a desired “pattern”, especially when the outcome is already known, or one pattern is more politically palatable than another, or no pattern at all. I say this as a Christian who believes in prayer and the Spirit. I have seen too many Christians and others led down strange paths by such silliness. (There were more natural disasters in the decade preceding the Millennium than in any time blahblahblah)
We can only be certain of the past, and have only hope and faith for the future. Everything else is just wishful thinking. ;^)

elifint

Posted 11 August 2006 at 07:45 am

At the phrase, “patterns that should not exist in truly random sequences,” I immediately became skeptical. There are no such patterns. Every bit stream is just as likely as every other bit stream, assuming they really do have random and not pseudo-random generators. I haven’t looked at their web site yet, but I have a suspicion that there’s a numerological fallacy at work here. Basically, you can find a pattern in any large set of numbers if you look long enough, and it can look impressive if you only quote the pattern that you found. But what people never seem to do is to estimate how many patterns exist that have descriptions that are equally or less complicated. Okay, so it randomly reproduced the 45th through 200th bits of pi at some point in some long run. The probably of that exact thing happening may be very low, but look at the set of similar things that would have been considered equally interesting: It may have reproduced the 40th through the 195th bits. It may have generated not the bits of pi, but the bits of some other interesting number, like e, sqrt(2), the golden ratio, etc. It may have generated a sequence of all 1’s. Or all 0’s. Or all alternating 101010, or any such repeating pattern 156 bits long. Or something else that might initially look random but in fact, with some analysis turns out to have a surprisingly simple description.

When you start allowing this kind of thing, the number of “surprisingly” patterned sequences becomes huge and ill-defined, and if you work hard enough in a large enough data set, what would be truly bizarre is NOT finding any patterns.

Anyway, that’s my quick first impression. I may have a more definite opinion when I actually read their web site. ;)

Furnace

Posted 11 September 2006 at 03:40 am

My phrenologist says this is true, so I totally believe it.

alias

Posted 11 September 2006 at 04:07 am

Sounds like a load of bull shit to me.

Toon

Posted 11 September 2006 at 04:34 am

Nothing can ever be “conclusively too patterned to be random”. Period.

Col.C.B.Leeds Ret.

Posted 11 September 2006 at 04:45 am

This type of information will surely help the fear sellers to a better job. If during this inactivity of coin flips, did anyone in a Real cash casino Win Big?? When that happens.. That will be history and we should all move to a gambling “Legal” state and Cash$$ IN.

Thanks for the ear and sorry for the Wet Blanket.

Dave Group

Posted 11 September 2006 at 06:08 am

An Oprah Winfrey special is a “significant event”?!?!?!?!? Seriously, though, I am really impressed with the comments about this article. I’m not knocking the article, but when you get into the realm of “fringe science”, most people out there will believe almost anything, and psi experiments must adhere to rigorous standards if they are ever to be accepted by the mainstream. To me, psychic ability will always be unproven until someone (a) identifies the area of the brain that is responsible for this ability and (b) identifies the medium through which psychic powers are transmitted from the sender to the target.

menopsycho

Posted 11 September 2006 at 06:44 am

If ya take two hundred monkeys with two hundred typewriters…………..

HarleyHetz

Posted 11 September 2006 at 08:09 am

I guess it could be said that it is interesting that people will fall for this…and much else out there…I liked the last article a LOT better!!

Sed Lex

Posted 11 September 2006 at 08:18 am

I’m reminded of the Bible Code craze prompted by Michael Drosnin’s 1997 research. If memory serves me right, he turned the Bible into a single string of letters and searched for occurences of equally spaced letters spelling out already past “future” events. The discussion was further fuelled by the fact that the Genesis seemingly provided better past-oriented predictive capability than War and Peace…

I rather prefer tea-leaves myself.

orc_jr

Posted 11 September 2006 at 09:42 am

perhaps i’m just regurgitating what’s already been said but i don’t understand how one can say that something is too patterned to be random. if you’re working with truly random numbers, then no matter how unlikely one result is, every other result is equally unlikely, so the only significance to be found in any one result is that we give it. also, what in the world do these random numbers have to do with consciousness? this whole thing makes no sense to me, and i don’t see any use for the project with the possible exception of that egg tapestry as abstract art.

Deo

Posted 11 September 2006 at 09:57 am

Randomnes dosnt exist.

lockedout

Posted 11 September 2006 at 11:03 am

God doesn’t play dice!

PRiME

Posted 11 September 2006 at 11:21 am

There were single trial experiments with this idea with just one person and a generator and they did appear to be able to alter or influence the generators numerical output,.

This is why they did the global thing, and since they think now that time functions in waves its possible, however I think there would be severe limits on how far you can predict and also of what event. A change in the stock market might have a similar impact as 9/11 (ie global company dropping, many investors getting the finger, can generate allot of vibes)

This tech is probably the foundation research to a future policing agency such as that on minority report, infact they use those methods today just not so sci-fi like.

rafgar

Posted 11 September 2006 at 12:56 pm

Current computing technology isn’t CAPABLE of truely random sequences. In fact, there’s basically nothing within the control of human beings that can generate truely random. Even a roll of a die is ordered enough that the outcome can be calculated given certain variables.

That said, there are much better ways to point to global consciousness. For instance, how many people who worked in the WTC called in sick on 9/11/2001? WAY more than normal. It’s also not uncommon for more than a normal number of passengers to cancel or change plans and therefore not be on a plane or train that crashes.

Drakvil

Posted 11 September 2006 at 02:45 pm

lockedout said: “God doesn’t play dice!”

Then what does he do on his days off? Certainly not Bingo! Perhaps hang-gliding?

menopsycho said: “If ya take two hundred monkeys with two hundred typewriters…………..”

agreed.

I do recall a Discover article a few years ago where some researcher found that someone concentrating on it appeared to be able to cause a change in a computer bit stream on the order of about one bit per hundred megabytes, but I didn’t lend too much credence to it as that would fall under the probability of a hardware fault. Now I’m thinking it might be surfacing in this experiment, but I still don’t lend any credence to any practical application or use for it… any group of people concentrating on some event can skew their data stream (in fact, I think it would be better to say ‘every group concentrating on an event’ [bowling and little league games, NFL, NHL, MLB, NBA, World Cup, Oprah’s diet of the week, the wife carrying competition…] would cause some effect of change in the data).

The point I’m trying to get at is that there is no effective way of of connecting cause and effect because groups of people are concentrating on their events at different time offsets from their event (before and after) and each one supposedly affects the data set. With over six billion inputs and one output, how will you know which signal you’re listening to?

Daniel did some good research on this, but I think the GCP people are measuring something other than what they think they are (or at least attributing the results to something they can’t prove… you can’t really separate predicting the outcome of a ball game from anticipating the ball game with this kind of data, if the data is in fact being affected by human conciousness unconciously)

just_dave

Posted 11 September 2006 at 03:21 pm

“The Force is strong with this one.”

Good one, Dan! Thanks for the laugh!

codeazure

Posted 11 September 2006 at 06:24 pm

just_dave said: “The Force is strong with this one.”

I think “I feel a great disturbance in the Force” is more appropriate ;-)

jart

Posted 11 September 2006 at 07:15 pm

They study it more closely than I do. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Misfit

Posted 11 September 2006 at 07:46 pm

How many of these machines are out there? And in what countries?

Now, I’d like to ask you all what will seem like an obvious question. Does randomness have anything to do with patterns (or lack thereof)? Many people seem to think that randomness means simply void of patterns, which is not true at all. Take pi, for example. pi is the only (unless I’m misinformed) sure mathematical value that has an infinite number of decimal places, and yet follows no pattern at all (unless of course we simply haven’t calculated pi out that far, but that seems pretty unlikely, believe it or not, even computers figuring this out aside, I believe that the record is held by a man in china who recited pi up to 50,000 decimal places… by memory)

That little tidbit of info aside, even going by the seemingly pattern-less can be argued as never totally random. Even radioactive decay happens at a certain rate over time. Even lavarands, (methods of generating numbers from the actions of Lava lamps), are described by wikipedia as merely being “pseudo-random.”

Is there such a thing as a random number… period? lest we forget the very first DI article (happy belated birthday, by the way) about how the simple physics of everything ultimately determines the course history will take (unless of course you take into account the Chaos Theory).

1) great snag line
2) I don’t believe it for the arguments stated above
3) writing left so many holes in it FOR the arguments stated above that I would encourage, nay, beg, for a better reasoned argument–too many facts missing for me to think about it beyond a knee-jerk response of running up the bullshit flag

etonalife

Posted 11 September 2006 at 09:04 pm

What if the GCP peaks are creating the major events by their own collective concsiousness?!
Damn Interesting I’d say. Shut ’em down mediocrity sake.

psyOtic

Posted 11 September 2006 at 10:02 pm

just a thought but if you look at any random sequence. long enough there would probably appear to be small patterns

I would guess that with world events happening all the time eventually one will align itself with these anomalies. To quote a tv show (if you make enough pridictions one of them is bound to come right.) [house.]

witcher

Posted 12 September 2006 at 12:08 am

You can predict an article of significance as you read upwards from the comments… the stupidy level of comments decrease and there are spikes of intelligence right at the top!

And of course at the bottom there would be comments that are bottomless pits of stupidity that could swallow the whole of humanity..

PS. this also means that all comments that follow this one are stupider than this one. :D

denki

Posted 12 September 2006 at 12:33 am

Bah. The human mind has a remarkable ability to assign things like these “eerie coincidences” to things that are completely un-related. Have you ever been listening to music and watching your screen saver at the same time? OMG! IT’S IN TIME TO THE MUSIC! sometimes! for like 3 seconds!
HOLY COW! PINK FLOYD AND THE WIZARD OF OZ SYNC UP!
I had a dream where I was eating bacon and then I woke up AND SOMEONE WAS COOKING BACON! I CAN SEE THE FUTURE IN MY DREAMS!
Look, these “random” numbers are producing “patterns” AND OH MY GOD AND OPRAH WINFREY SPECIAL IS ON!
IF I WEAR THESE PANTS IT RAINS 60% OF THE TIME!

Yay for logical fallacies!
A
B
Therefore, A causes B

In.bred

Posted 12 September 2006 at 05:29 am

Cats are random all you need is a cat powered RNG.

witcher said: “You can predict an article of significance as you read upwards from the comments… the stupidy level of comments decrease and there are spikes of intelligence right at the top!

And of course at the bottom there would be comments that are bottomless pits of stupidity that could swallow the whole of humanity..

PS. this also means that all comments that follow this one are stupider than this one. :D”

Yes welcome to doctor stupids bottomless pit of stupidity.

orc_jr

Posted 12 September 2006 at 07:14 am

rafgar said: “That said, there are much better ways to point to global consciousness. For instance, how many people who worked in the WTC called in sick on 9/11/2001? WAY more than normal. It’s also not uncommon for more than a normal number of passengers to cancel or change plans and therefore not be on a plane or train that crashes.”

i don’t buy it. nobody remarks when a large number of people change travel plans and there is no crash.

circumstance

Posted 12 September 2006 at 07:15 am

It’s damn interesting that there are scientists out there who take this crap seriously.

cowdoc

Posted 12 September 2006 at 07:37 am

brains are pattern identification machines. They have to be (think about it), and they are damn good at it. Sometimes they find patterns where they don’t exist.

Always remember, 84% of statistics are bunk.

FMZ

Posted 12 September 2006 at 08:50 am

Alright, I haven’t read the whole site yet, but to those that use the argument that no computer generated number can be truly random, I’d recommend you read the evidence provided before chiming in.

From the site: “The network has grown to about 65 host sites around the world running custom software that reads the output of *physical* random number generators and records a 200-bit trial sum once every second, continuously over months and years.”

The jury is still out for me on this one, but even if I decide I don’t agree with it, at least let’s make the arguments relevant and not already debunked.

dday

Posted 12 September 2006 at 09:47 am

I wonder if it predicted this blog…………

Osprey39

Posted 12 September 2006 at 11:45 am

Isn’t there always something “important” going on? This seems like complete voodoo science. And I don’t see how any patterns would correlate to the “human consciousness” in any way.

HiEv

Posted 12 September 2006 at 12:26 pm

I have to totally agree with lateralus98, elifint, and the other skeptics of this as well. This is complete pseudoscience. It’s just people looking for patterns in random numbers, and with enough random numbers you can always find patterns in some of it. For some more criticism of this research see:

I flipped a quarter and I thought it was going to be heads and I WAS RIGHT! The heads side was right on the other side of the tails that came up! WOW!! I mean, dude, that just totally blows my mind!

Dragon_Scientist

Posted 12 September 2006 at 03:58 pm

The possibility of this happening is highly improbable, due to the fact that not everyone in the world is thinking (conscious or unconsciously), about the problem about to effect a part of the world. More likely to effect this is the four world power lines that are pure energy that tend to effect things around the world like natural disasters etc., thus causing a disruption in randomness. This is what is more likely to effect what occurs in the world not human conscious. Like its said, if whatever someone was thinking came true the whole world would be dead.

etonalife

Posted 13 September 2006 at 02:43 am

The skepticism related to this is understandable, and quite appropriate. However, I must ponder, what if these guys are on too something here? How fascinating would that be!? Perhaps, if they keep expanding their search, they find that it’s not a collective human consciousness at all, but something else completely unknown (like those power-lines mentioned earlier) or perhaps other flux of earthly energy. Perhaps it’s a waste of time and money, but maybe not. As skeptical as we are, we truly don’t know.

schuylercat

Posted 13 September 2006 at 05:20 am

Article…interesting, so it meets the criteria. Generated a lot of buzz, didn’t it?

I have a problem buying this one, though – there was a discovery channel show which mentioned this (between RIVETING home improvement and biker shows) and it all sounds very “other side” when you have creepy music and nothing else to watch. Me, I like the monkeys/typewriters theory.

1 – Tom Cruise will make a movie, and people will go see it. Some people, amazingly, will like it. Lots of people, not surprisingly, will continue to think he’s a f&*^ing idiot.
2 – Our current president, everyone’s favorite psychotic savant, will say something profound, then honk it all up by saying something equally stupid when he goes off the cuff. It will be uncovered the profound thing was written for him. His approval ratings will change. Lots of people will continue to think he’s a f&*^ing idiot.
3 – Oprah’s weight will fluctuate. Dr. Phil will uncover a family plot. Paris Hilton will be discussed publicly by a known media figure as a “brain-dead f&^k toy” – later that day, she’ll make a hundred grand for being seen at a rave in Newport Beach and give a stranger a blow job.
4 – NASA will announce they have “internal issues” which may cause delays in the shuttle program.
5 – A senator will announce it is “unconscionable” to continue to fight in Iraq. Another senator will announce it is “un-American” not to fight in Iraq. Soldiers will die regardless of anyone’s conscience, and twenty years from now we’ll realize it was all for nothing after listening to a lot of Hendrix and Credence.
6 – Pluto is not a planet. Neither is Mars. They are both giant ice cubes in a cosmic gin and tonic, and you and I are nothing but dust motes, awaiting the final swallow. The Pope will deny this, stating we need to stop using rubbers for birth control (never mind that whole AIDS thing), and the Wizard of Oz is evil, because “there’s no such thing as a ‘good’ witch”. Judy Garland will return from the dead and kick his ass.
7 – The Earth will come to an end (I can’t confirm this completely, but hasn’t everyone taken a stab at this one?) on February 3rd, 2009. Fortunately, God made a backup copy on the celestial NAS using FLM, and he’ll have us all up and running again in 48 hours. Then we’ll all sit around and sing Kumbaya and cuddle on each other in a massive global love fest where scientists and intelligent design proponents will announce they’re forming a rock band called “TheWhat.”. Roger Daltry will sue them.
8 – Alan Bellows will write something damned interesting. Several times.

I need my Lithium. Adios!

Mike Hearn

Posted 13 September 2006 at 11:05 am

Wow, such much scepticism, so little fact! Let’s clear a few things up:

The RNGs involved are based on measuring quantum improbability via measurement of electronic noise. This is about the most random physical source we know how to build. It’s important that they are physical. The idea that the mind can influence quantum probabilities is not new.

Software based RNGs are not truly random, they are based on eg the Mersenne Twister, which gives pseudo-random results. They aren’t physical so are worthless for this experiment.

As already pointed out, experiments done under controlled conditions have indicated that people can influence the rate of radioactive decay through the power of their mind – a few subjects who got good at it were able to make the digital counter recording the decaying particles do pretty much what they wanted (well not go down obviously, but they could affect the rate).

I wouldn’t rule out the idea that we can influence physical probability with our minds. Quite a few independent experiements seem to imply this, done by people with no connection to each other and no pre-determined bias in what they were looking for.

Consider also that the core of the neurons in our brains seem to behave in similar ways and should be subject to quantum probabilities (ie be purely random), yet aren’t.

schuylercat

Posted 13 September 2006 at 11:25 am

Hey Mike,

You mean the Earth ISN’T going to end? Damn! I worked hard for that data! Should have had a beer…

Meanwhile…I’m not totally skeptical. Just mostly – I like big, fat empirical evidence, like fingerprints and confessions, but there’s a part of me that has always entertained psi potential beyond my flip commentary and a giggle. Maybe I just want it to be true – I honestly can’t tell the difference. So until I see some fingerprint or hear a confession I’ll flat-out doubt Uri Geller, wonder a bit about distance viewing, and leave a fairly large space in the whole mechanical monstrosity of this universe for some “unknown” to occur. Doubt, in my case, leaves me with a sense of fair play, and I leave the facts to the scientists…who I occasionally doubt.

another viewpoint

Posted 13 September 2006 at 12:14 pm

“We’re perfectly willing to discover that we’ve made mistakes, but we haven’t been able to find any, and neither has anyone else,” says Nelson. “Our data shows clearly that the chances of getting these results by fluke are one million to one against.”

…I once thought I made a mistake, but I was wrong. For now, I’ll put my trust in one of the best commercially printed future fortune tellers… The Farmer’s Almanac.

circumstance said: “It’s damn interesting that there are scientists out there who take this crap seriously.”

…wrong again…actually, it’s pretty damn disgusting that there are some scientists out there that are being OVERPAID to produce this kind of crap. After all, these folks must not know what it’s like in the private sector…they expect results!

Anthony Kendall

Posted 13 September 2006 at 12:23 pm

another viewpoint said: “…wrong again…actually, it’s pretty damn disgusting that there are some scientists out there that are being OVERPAID to produce this kind of crap. After all, these folks must not know what it’s like in the private sector…they expect results!”

Whose saying the scientists are paid anything? Perhaps the whole GCP is a hobby for them. Also, what sort of funding agency would pay for this research?

Yeah, private sector science is great stuff. Witness the drug companies. They can cure your erectile dysfunction 15 ways, but if you have a rare and horribly debilitating or fatal disease you’d better look elsewhere. Or, for that matter, if you are one of the millions that die each year from malaria, you aren’t of much profit to the private sector, so you’re out of luck. That private sector sure gets results, just not always the right kind.

orielbean

Posted 13 September 2006 at 01:29 pm

We have a right to be skeptical, as we do not yet have the tools to measure human consciousness. Perhaps in time, this method used will be refined to measure such a thing, but at this point there is too much possible noise to interfere, and no known way to calibrate the significance of “events”.

Perhaps today the final species of an unknown creature has passed away, and due to it, an entire dependent ecosystem fails and cascades across the world. How would we measure it? If the tree falls, and scientists are on a lunch break, then it never hits the ground until the paleontologists dig it up or a drill rediscovers it as oil thousands of years later. What a nice idea, though, that human consciousness is measurable. I sure would enjoy learning more about it, but this is a little too Ouija-board for now.

another viewpoint

Posted 13 September 2006 at 03:14 pm

Anthony Kendall said: “… Also, what sort of funding agency would pay for this research?”

…perhaps you’ve never heard of Senator Proxmire (may he rest in peace) from Wisconsin? He used to publish his annual “Golden Fleece” award list that was chocked full of pork barrel spending by our infamous federal government for some very rediculous research projects…studying the sexual habits of primates comes to mind as one of those projects that received government funding. You better believe there were more….many more!

money$$

Posted 13 September 2006 at 03:59 pm

i dont know if there is some kind of world matrix that can be predicted by the flip of coin, how can anyone know or assume something like that. I just think that these scientist might be a little ahead of them selves on this experiment and waisting their own time.

HiEv

Posted 14 September 2006 at 12:58 pm

Mike Hearn said: “Wow, such much scepticism, so little fact!”

But skepticism is a good thing! You shouldn’t complain about that.

I think you may actually be talking about cynicism, which is something else entirely.

Mike Hearn said: “Let’s clear a few things up:

The RNGs involved are based on measuring quantum improbability via measurement of electronic noise. This is about the most random physical source we know how to build. It’s important that they are physical.”

Mike Hearn said: “Software based RNGs are not truly random, they are based on eg the Mersenne Twister, which gives pseudo-random results. They aren’t physical so are worthless for this experiment.”

It’s a minor point, but there are actually a variety of different pseudorandom number generator (PRNG) algorithms out there other than Mersenne Twister, especially when PRNGs are used for cryptography.

Mike Hearn said: “As already pointed out, experiments done under controlled conditions have indicated that people can influence the rate of radioactive decay through the power of their mind – a few subjects who got good at it were able to make the digital counter recording the decaying particles do pretty much what they wanted (well not go down obviously, but they could affect the rate).”

Really? Where are these studies? The few I’ve heard of before had various design problems that could have caused the results they found.

Mike Hearn said: “I wouldn’t rule out the idea that we can influence physical probability with our minds. Quite a few independent experiements seem to imply this, done by people with no connection to each other and no pre-determined bias in what they were looking for.”

I haven’t seen any that weren’t either problematic in their design or were not reproducible. For example the PEAR group has done many studies like this and the results have never been that great and/or reproducible when they didn’t cherry pick their data or have a flawed design. See here:

If this effect is real, then anyone could apply for and win the $1 million, but so far nobody has. Care to guess why? If you guessed that people can’t prove the effect is real then you’ve guessed right!

Mike Hearn said: “Consider also that the core of the neurons in our brains seem to behave in similar ways and should be subject to quantum probabilities (ie be purely random), yet aren’t.”

Huh? I studied brain physiology in college as part of my Artificial Intelligence/Cognitive Science major, and nothing I read supports that assertion. My senior project for AI/CS was actually using simulated neurons as a programming language, and while my neurons were simplified versions, they wouldn’t have been much less non-random than real neurons.

Anyways, I’m not saying none of this should ever be investigated, I’m just saying that right now there is no unbiased, reproducible, statistically significant, scientific evidence that the mind (or many minds) can influence quantum/random events.

themuffinking

Posted 15 September 2006 at 02:17 pm

They do in fact use perfectly random numbers; the computers are linked to Geiger counter-type devices which generate random coin flips based on how the radioactive material it’s looking at is radioacting. Radioacting? Yeah, let’s go with that.

A perfect example of how any ‘argument’ (and I use that term very loosely) can almost entirely lose any semblance of credibility, with a spelling or grammatical error.

eg. Some forum frequenters are really stupid in my oppinion [sic].

myles325

Posted 22 September 2006 at 04:32 am

1. Re: random number generation. Strictly speaking you can’t generate random numbers out of electrical noise. These are called pseudo-random, but you can make them sufficiently random for any purposes humans might envisage, so no probs there.

2. Yes, random (or pseudo-random) number lists will contain patterns and “unlikely” series. If they did not, you could make predictions about what number will come out next, biassed in your favour. This is what gamblers do when they bet a 7 won’t come up in a game becoz it has come up say 5 times just recently. It’s called the Monte Carlo error.

3. And yes, an observer IS entitled to say that an extremely structured run of numbers is not by chance. If he could not then it would be impossible to do any experiment at all. The association between thalidomide and birth defects is a statistical one. You could always say it is just a coincidence, but when such a run occurs, scientists “bet” as it were, that the association is too strong to be just a statistical blip.

4. In good science, as Karl Popper explained, a scientist starts with a hypothesis. It doesn’t matter how weird and wacky it is. Let’s say, he hypothesises that the moon is made of cheese. Now, here comes the critical part. If he is a reputable scientist, he then puts forward the MOST SEVERE TESTS he can think of to DISPROVE this hypothesis. He might love his theory, and feel psychologically that it must be true, but on a formal level, he does his level best to try to destroy it. And if it survives these kinds of tests, then it is all the stronger for it.

5. What I notice about occult experiments like this one is that the participants all seem keen not to TEST the theory but to amass CONFIRMING instances of where it is successful, while burying instances where it is not. They are not trying to KILL their own theory.

6. Scientific method is not some bizarre metaphysical ritual only understood by geniuses. Most of us partake of it all the time. Here is scientific method applied to the hypothesis that a list of pseudo-random numbers has some real correlation with seemingly unconnected events like disasters. Give a list of such numbers (List A) made over, say, a 12 month period, to a group of scientists and ask them to analyse it pointing out any “significant” peaks, but don’t tell them what period of time it covers. Give another group of scientists a piece of paper and pen ask them to list (List B) what events they would consider to be ones which grabbed the whole world’s attention over a period of say 10 years. Now get a third party to marry the 2 lists and see if there is a statistical correlation between them.

7. I get tired of hearing about how some vague unnamed institution did some vague experiment at some vague date which however we are always assured was a fully randomised double-blind effort with full security etc etc. Hardly anyone goes to check them up (and they are absolutely legion) but when they do, they almost invariably find the same freaks in some Mickey Mouse College playing games with themselves.

8. Lastly, here is why I think Western Science is not some cultural paradigm on a par with other myths. A couple of years ago, some health specialists were doing some work in Kenya, and approached a traditional Masai tribesman, asking him if they could inoculate his cattle against some disease extant at the time, and promising him that the injections would only do good, and no harm. The tribesman thought for a while and then he said, through an interpretor, Well I believe you and thank you, but it might be best if you do half my cattle now, and then maybe you can do all of them next year. You see, here was a traditional Masai cattle herder who was on excellent terms with the fundamentals of a good scientific test. He was hedging his risks, and at the same time allowing himself the scope to see what if any benefits might accrue from such treatment. I would rather he take the place of a few of these overpaid nincompoops who espouse New Age ideas but have too little horse sense to test them properly.

elifint

Posted 29 September 2006 at 07:35 pm

Misfit said: Now, I’d like to ask you all what will seem like an obvious question. Does randomness have anything to do with patterns (or lack thereof)? Many people seem to think that randomness means simply void of patterns, which is not true at all. Take pi, for example. pi is the only (unless I’m misinformed) sure mathematical value that has an infinite number of decimal places, and yet follows no pattern at all (unless of course we simply haven’t calculated pi out that far, but that seems pretty unlikely, believe it or not, even computers figuring this out aside, I believe that the record is held by a man in china who recited pi up to 50,000 decimal places… by memory)
“

It sounds like what you’re saying is that pi is an irrational number–that is, its decimal expansion goes on forever without ever settling into a repeating sequence. But there are a couple of funny things about irrational numbers. Far from being the only one, pi is just one of an infinite number of irrational numbers. In fact, irrational numbers are so common that, in the sense of mathematical measure theory, “essentially all” real numbers are irrational. That is, irrational numbers are the rule, not the exception, and rational numbers are in fact so rare that the size of the set of rational numbers can’t even be measured on the same scale as the size of the set of rational numbers. The rational numbers form what’s called a “measure zero subset” of the set of real numbers. That is, if you were to pick a number from 0 to 1, with all such numbers equally likely, the probability of getting a rational number is zero!

Yes, I know, it’s a very odd thing that probability zero is not the same thing as impossible. But that’s the sort of thing you run into when you do this kind of math.

But there’s another thing you might be curious to know: pi, far from being unpatterned, actually follows a very well-defined pattern. You can write a short computer program that will perfectly predict every digit of pi if you wait long enough. In doing so, you compress the information in an infinite, nonrepeating string of digits (the expansion of pi) into a finite string of characters (the computer program). Now THAT is data compression! None of this ZIP stuff that might compress your file by a factor of 2. We’ve compressed this information stream by a factor of infinity!

So now you can start to think about how short of a computer program it takes to tell you all the digits of some number. This notion is called the Kolmogorov complexity (slighting some technical issues). All rational numbers have a finite Kolmogorov complexity. Pi also has a finite complexity, as does e, the square root of 2, the golden ratio, and any other irrational number you can specifically name.

And now here’s where it gets bizarre. The set of numbers with a finite complexity . . . is also measure zero. That is, that number between 0 and 1 that you picked at random is not only, with probability 1, irrational. It’s also, with probability 1, such a “complicated” number that it can’t even be described in a finite space!

elifint

Posted 29 September 2006 at 07:51 pm

psyOtic said: “just a thought but if you look at any random sequence. long enough there would probably appear to be small patterns

I would guess that with world events happening all the time eventually one will align itself with these anomalies. To quote a tv show (if you make enough pridictions one of them is bound to come right.) [house.]”

This is a great example for what I was saying earlier! Let’s analyze this sequence and see how big of a coincidence we’re really talking about.

You found that a string of 7 bits appeared twice in a string of 45 bits, and that the first such string was also at the very beginning of that string of 45 bits. Okay, then, there are 2^7 = 128 possible strings of 7 bits, and (not counting the first 7 bits of your 45) you had 32 7-bit sequences within your 38 remaining bits that could have matched. The probability of a random match, if we assume your typing was equivalent to a series of coin flips, is about 32/128 or 25%. Surprising? Not so much. Especially when you might have been equally surprised at matching, say, the last 7 bits, or matching the sequence of 7 bits in reverse order. Or with h’s replaced by t’s and vice versa. Already, we’re finding that a pattern of this magnitude is pretty likely, and there are a whole lot more permutations of what might be considered a “surprising” pattern that I’ve ignored.

But also, you weren’t typing very “randomly.” If you look at the sequence you typed, you’ll see that you were quite a bit more likely to place a t after an h and an h after a t than you were to repeat characters. I count 11 repeated pairs, when in 45 perfect coin flips you’d expect 22 such pairs. If I were to go to the trouble to calculate it, I could come up with a confidence estimate for the proposition that the procedure you followed in typing that was far more “patterned” than a series of random coin flips. And I expect that that confidence interval would be quite high. I can’t conclude for certain that you were mostly alternating presses with those two fingers, but I can be pretty sure that you were.

So, with your bit stream actually having a pretty strong “pattern” in it, the probability of a match goes up even higher.

In the end, it would have been surprising if there HADN’T been a pattern of that magnitude in what you typed!

Actually… and it seems as if I’m going against the grain here…. there might be something to this. Being a graduate student in neuroscience, this perked my attention. As I’m sure most know, neurotransmitters are released from neurons. This release is of course based on needs of the neurons to communicate something and molecular interactions, etc, but there is also release probability. I thought it was crazy when I first heard of it… I mean your brain working by probability??? But look in any neuroscience textbook if you don’t believe me. Anyway, maybe somehow release probability and quantum mechanics and consciousness are all tied together. We now know of quantum “spooky action at a distance” where electrons that are physically far apart can affect each other. So, with these tantilizing bits of information, I don’t think it’s totally unreasonable to think that, ok, and I know I’m going out on a limb here, but maybe things going on at the quantum level can affect the probablity of release of neurotransmitters in all of our heads and somehow modify? coordinate? consciousness… and hell maybe even unconsciouness. So maybe this project is a first step towards understanding these interactions. Science is about exploring and if you don’t explore, you’ll never find anything. :)

muhoboika

Posted 11 December 2006 at 07:19 pm

first of all what is Global Conciousness? Something that applies to whole planet earth, universe or specific area? What are the limits of global conciousness? If it applies to our universe then the numbers should show patterns whenever any *major* occurence happens anywhere in the universe with other concious beings, if not does not that mean we are alone, or this is just a load of BS.

Jenever

Posted 20 December 2006 at 09:43 pm

The unscientific approach these guys have taken is immediately evident to me, on the basis of two points:

1. Even ignoring the lack of any science supporting or predicting these mysterious ‘fields’, electronic randomisers (or indeed, even physical coin flips) aren’t truly random–so there’s no reason they should be interacted with any differently to any other electronic system, and if indeed they are, it wouldn’t be indicative of anything to do with the collective conciousness interacting with probability.

2. It appears effect has been confused with cause. Let’s say that these low-randomness events do preceed major incidents (which I find hard to swallow, as it appears they attempt only to pair major incidents with these event periods rather than the other way around, which proves nothing but coincidence). This would seem to imply a causal relationship. However, a large number of the things listed on their website are bombings and other terrorist activity, and in reality the ’cause’, that is the planning stages, begin months or years before. It should be nearly impossible to locate the corresponding low-randomness periods for these events; they should only appear for incidents themselves based on randomness, like vehicle accidents or the exact timing of natural disasters.
The alternative is that these ‘fields’ can travel backwards through time. Ignoring the problems with sending signals this way, let’s say that that is indeed what happens. A major event happens, and then a ‘field’ powerful enough to travel back in time to negate randomness is created. Even if this is true, the attibution to a collective conciousness is baseless. Wishful thinking on the part of these idiots. Why would it need to have anything to do with mysterious biological ‘fields’? Why not something else, such as the huge amount of media attention attracted by large-scale catastrophes?
Obviously that’s nonsense. But invoking a time-travelling media-filtering noosphere to interphere with pseudorandom coin-flippers, in the absense of any corroborating predictions, seems equally ridiculous.

“experiments done under controlled conditions have indicated that people can influence the rate of radioactive decay through the power of their mind”

Could you please cite the reference of those experiments ? I am very interested.

Thanks.

bblacet

Posted 09 August 2013 at 09:57 pm

It’s ignorant to object to the research with what little understanding we have on the universe. Many things that previously thought to happen without reason turned out turned out to work systematically. At one point I’m sure the calendar was a silly idea…and clocks…and times that salmon would swim up stream or the birds would fly south…when women menstruate…etc. It seems the world is more likely to operate on a system than not.

bblacet

Posted 09 August 2013 at 09:58 pm

Excuse my typos, my phone is not cooperating.

Bill

Posted 16 April 2014 at 08:37 am

This is like predicting the future after the fact and realizing how exact the prediction was after it has already taken place as in Nostradamus and piecing together what he wrote and connecting it to real life after it has already done. Pick other “unknown” random events and see what the readings are not just the ones “everybody” is aware of and see what is found then compare those high readings with these high readings and look for statistical significance.

Bill

Posted 16 April 2014 at 08:42 am

Sounds like looking for what you find as in Nostrodamus’ predictions after the fact and how they can look so true for some people. Analyze “unknown” random events and compare them to the ones “everybody” knows and look for statistical significance.

Bill

Posted 16 April 2014 at 08:55 am

1. Ask people who believe in conspiracy theories what they think about all of this.
2. Ask the 3% of people who control the majority of wealth in the world too.
3. Finally ask computers after they have collected data for 1000 to 10,000 years because at this rate we’ll be too dumb to figure it out for ourselves by then. Makes me think of the movie Idiocrasy.

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